Meeting of Scientific and Technical Council’s Section on safety in the oil and gas industry facilities took place in Ufa

17.11.2015 The delegation of Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service (Rostechnadzor) headed by Mr. Alexey Aleshin, the Chairman of Rostechnadzor, started to work in Ufa. On Tuesday, November 17, 2015 the Scientific and Technical Council’s Section on safety in the oil and gas industry facilities opened in the capital of Bashkortostan.  The Head of Republic of Bashkortostan, Mr. Rustam Khamitov, participated in this Meeting. This event is chaired by Mrs. Svetlana Radionova, Deputy Chairman of Rostechnadzor.

It is expected that the members of Scientific and Technical Council will address issues concerned with the industrial safety indices of hazardous production facilities of oil and gas industry sector and give consideration to dynamic model used for accident’s risks evaluation and safety assessment. The Councils’ members are to discuss the methodology on establishment of acceptable accident risk levels at hazardous production facilities of oil and gas industry sector as well as other aspects treated as of primary importance for this industry.

“Providing compliance with industrial safety requirements and prevention of accidents at hazardous production facilities are considered as the fundamental functions of Rostechnadzor. That is what we are going to speak about today: concerning risks evaluation of accidents origination at different stages of  lifecycle of  the oil and gas industry companies  along with measures envisaged to reduce such risks”,- Alexey Aleshin said before the opening of the meeting.

He noted that the Republic of Bashkortostan continued to be the region ranked the first in oil refining and production of oil products – 50 million tons of oil were processed in 2014 (which were 10,2 %  from total oil refining  in Russia); this region is also ranked to be the ninth  in respect to oil production volumes (more that 17,8 tons of oil were recovered in 2014). This is the reason why it is really very important to consider here, in Ufa, the issues of industrial safety provision at oil and gas industry facilities.

While addressing the meeting, Alexey Aleshin noted that 72% of hazardous production facilities (extreme- and high-hazardousness facilities) registered with State Register of hazardous production facilities are referred to oil and gas industry complex.

“While activity at these enterprises is characterized with  high-risk factors  in respect to origination of man-caused accidents, so, the accountability for such accidents prevention is shared among the employees of Rostechnadzor along with the responsibility for increasing of industrial safety level at hazardous production facilities of this segment of national industry”,- the Chairman of Rostechnadzor recalled.

According to his account, industrial safety – it is not merely about accidents prevention and ensuring of safety for life and health of people.  But it is also modernization of national economics, development of its competitiveness, and stimulation of innovative capacity of the enterprises. “It is very important  to organize activity of the oil and gas industry in a way as to ensure  that it does not face excessive pressure from the state, but all necessary safety requirements  are respected”, - reminded Aleshin.

Aiming to fulfill these tasks, Rostechnadzor is consistently implementing the strategy on introduction of new methods on monitoring, including the risk-oriented supervision. The first stage of modernization of state regulation system in the sphere of industrial safety is dedicated to introduction of “static” model of the risk-oriented supervision.  

“We are required by the society and the business not to stop at the achieved and to further enhance the tool-set of the risk-oriented supervision, moving away from “static” model to its “dynamic” model. This requires implementation of measures by Rostechnadzor to establish the system on remote monitoring regarding the technological processes at hazardous production facilities using state-of-the-art instruments of telemetry and information and communication technologies.  The project on implementation of the system on remote monitoring/supervision is currently being piloted in particular at offshore facilities on oil and gas production”, - the Chairman of Service said.
According to him, new instruments of supervision activity will enable not only to predict the possibility of accidents origination with certain confidence, but also to provide recommendations to the operating organizations regarding accidents prevention.

Section on safety in the oil and gas industry facilities as a part of Scientific and Technical Council under Rostechnadzor was organized in 2011 to consider and develop recommendations in relation to primary important issues of scientific and technical policy, which were attributed to the competence of Rostechnadzor. The representatives of the leading oil and gas companies, scientific, consultancy and expert organizations are the members of this Section of Scientific and Technical Council.
On Wednesday, November 18, the delegation of Rostechnadzor will participate in workshop titled “Issues crucial for the improvement of supervision activity in the sphere of industrial safety of highly-hazardous facilities of the oil and gas industry complex”. This  workshop participants  will consider new instruments of supervision activity, which will allow not only reliably predict the possibility of accidents origination, but also to present recommendations to the operating organizations in respect to accidents prevention.